Obedience is not the goal
Sunday musings: I once turned around on a midnight train because my boss told me to. It taught me everything I needed about loyalty and burnout. Here is how I found my way out and how you can.
Early in my career, I worked at a fast-paced ad agency. You know, the type where staying late was worn like a badge of honour?
One night, I stayed until almost midnight. Bleary-eyed, I caught the last MRT home. Halfway through the ride, my phone rang.
It was my Account Director. “Come back. There’s more to finish.”
I froze. I did not want to upset anyone. I did not want to be that person. So I turned around, returned to the office, did the work, and took a cab home, angry, confused, but mostly defeated.
And for what? That was the night I learned that no amount of loyalty protects you in a system designed to extract everything until you break.
This week, I got a message on LinkedIn that took me right back to that moment.
Someone told me they are at a stage where they want to make a living without burning more than 40 hours a week.
They are done with the hustle. They want their work to reflect who they are, not just what they can endure.
And I get it. Most of us are trapped in a game we did not choose. Wake up. Dread the day. Do work that feels meaningless. Repeat.
We call it survival. But the truth? It is just another form of slow death.
The job you once loved becomes the job you cannot stand. The mission becomes a grind. The grind becomes your identity.
The system tells you: Keep going. Keep sacrificing. One day, you will retire. One day, you will live.
But what if the game is rigged? What if working yourself to the bone is not the path? It is the trap? What if the cost of “making it” is too high?
The hardest truth to swallow is this: The greatest risk in life is staying the same. Not failing, not pivoting, not starting over, staying the same.
The future is not about grinding through 80-hour weeks. It is not even about escaping work. It is about doing work that pulls you forward and feels like play, not punishment.
That is why I chose to build my own thing. I leveraged my skills, my story, and my finite time. I created products that scaled. I wrote words that mattered. I worked fewer hours but at a higher frequency of meaning.
Because the real flex? It is not proving how much you can suffer.
It is building a life you do not need to escape from.
See you next Sunday.
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